I’m hanging out with Harlan Ellison now.

Well, I’ve been to the house twice -- Ellison Wonderland, with the tower and the 5 foot door and the secret rooms and stairwells and the tens of thousands of vintage paperbacks and comics and sculpture and the charming British wife and the gargoyles overlooking the driveway and the frieze of the Lost Aztec Temple of Mars on the outer walls.

I’ve been there twice, and spoke to him a bunch on the phone. I’m not going to get into how this budding friendship started (this blog had something to do with it) because it seems too good to be true. Harlan’s been an unwitting, guiding guru in my life since the 7th grade, when I read his short story, "A Boy and His Dog", in detention. Well, in the hallway outside the classroom from which I’d been booted -- here comes an Ellisonian phrase -- ass-over teakettle.

We will return to Harlan. But won’t you take my hand, while we wander the memory corridor of the last month?

I attended Maila Nurmi’s funeral on February 17th. She was Vampira -- the original, Goth-when-Goth-meant-pariah doom-chick. As Dana Gould said in her eulogy, "Every time I drive down Melrose I see 40 of you."

Seeing her fans and friends in the sunlight around her tombstone, I realized it was the most vitamin D they’d get all year. And someone sent a jack o’ lantern filled with black roses.

The Sunday after Maila’s funeral I attended the Oscars. If Maila was Vampira, then Gary Busey is gunning to be the new Renfield. He collected a year’s worth of goody bags, gift baskets and snack trays, and ascended back into the Kodak Theatre’s rafters, where he’ll live, arguing with bats, until the next Oscar ceremony.

I know I’m zipping through the past month like a hornet but all I’m left with are fleeting sensory impressions of what I witnessed. They’re potent, though.

Like the 1st Annual Bridgetown Comedy Festival in Portland, Oregon.

It was last weekend. It was put together by comedy fans for comedy fans. I did a set on the evening of Saturday, March 8th. Two, really, in a fun, smelly rock club filled with resentful drunks wondering where the band was, and why these pasty drips with ironic T-shirts where on stage, whining about their love lives.

I love Portland...but. I love visiting there...but.

It’s Disneyland for the alternative scene. "I’ve never seen such a low testosterone level in a city," said my wife, enchanted by Voodoo Donuts and the Chinese Gardens. "I know I shouldn’t say this, but it’s hard to imagine anyone ever being raped up here."

Someone needs to set off an Ambition Bomb in front of Powell’s.

I met Brian Michael Bendis for dinner at Le Pigeon, where at least our taste buds were raped...with deliciousness!

(If the owners of Le Pigeon are reading this, feel free to put that on the message machine for your reservations).

Brian’s already let me read the first three issues of SECRET INVASION, which is Marvel Comics’ big summer dust-up.

After COUNTDOWN and CIVIL WAR, I was going to take a break from these big summer crossover thingies. But this SECRET INVASION...holy shit.

This is not a big, disposable, multi-issue donnybrook. This is a blitzkrieg from page one. Bendis basically worked out a remorseless, nothing-but-business tearing down of the Marvel Universe. And it’s clear the story has been set up...for...years. And the deaths are treated so off-handedly, with no appeal or remorse -- and this is three issues in.

So far, each issue has also ended with a shit-your-pants, ’Wait, what in the FUCK?!" moment...after, of course, about three or four what-the-fuck moments tossed off during the course of each story. As it stands right now, someone’s holding a possible key to stopping the Skrulls, and it’s the LAST person in the Marvel Universe you’d want with that info. And no, it’s not Dr. Doom.

Bendis is sending me issue 4 tomorrow morning. I can’t wait to post it over at Huffington.

Speaking of comics, one of the many wonderful things that happened when I was in Portland last weekend happened after my last show. A shy, unassuming little dude sidled up to me outside the Mt. Tabor Legacy Theater and handed me three of his self-published comics.

I get a lot of self-published stuff from aspiring artists and writers. Some, like the self-published graphic novel ALMIGHTY by Ed Laroche (http://www.myspace.com/blackhalo51) are goddamn amazing. Others, like EIGHT BALLS by this guy I met in Berkeley named Dan Cows, not so much.

But boy, did I luck out when Matthew Bernier slipped a few of his exquisite black-and-white comics in my hand. POTATO AUTOPSY was the perfect amount of sinister, sweet and funny. Don’t take my word for it -- visit his website at www.Matthew-Bernier.com. And be polite -- the poor genius has Asberger’s. And Harlan Ellison is reading his comics. I gave the copies to Harlan the last time we met, and he was bowled over.

Oh yeah, Harlan. This ought to begin and end with him. Much of who I am today begins and ends with him.

Like I said, I’ve met the man twice, and I’ve already got enough to fill a book. But I’ll give you this:

The first time I visited the house, I brought him a box of cupcakes from Yummy Cupcakes. He came to the door in a ratty black bathrobe. In the kitchen a few moments later, I struggled to tear the taped-shut box open. Harlan gently pushed me aside and, reaching into the bathrobe’s pocket, produced a switchblade.

"Kid, I’ve outlived being unprepared".

Then he cut the box open. We ate cupcakes and he told me about, among other things, Bruce Lee, the folly of religion, the importance of bedroom slippers, and the mutant residents of Great Yarmouth.

One of the top five days of my life.

Oh, and he had a little plastic plaque made for me of his favorite Gerald Kersh quote. It could not be more timely, what with the demise of THE WIRE, and all the things David Simon tried to show us about humanity in its flawless five seasons:

"...there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment."

(*OH FUCK! 11:31 p.m. update -- Bendis just sent me Issue 4. Wheeeee!)

(*OH FUCK FUCK! 12:08 a.m. Just read it. Issue 4 has, so far, the coolest line, said by the most unexpected character: "Get everyone".)